Butch Sightings: A Social Interaction

Butch Sightings is a social interaction art project that was inspired by interest and appreciation for butches & studs (females and/or women who appear masculine, queer, old school, dyke, bulldagger, aggressive [AG] and other terms to be added as I come across them).

Queer family camp wouldn't be the same without the nightly cocktail parties held before dinner outside various tents and cabins. Maureen is the consummate host - mixing up delicious drinks and serving wry humor.

We went to queer family camp last week. A fabulous and incredibly loving community of families, teachers, little kids and big ones. It's the best time of our entire year. And you know, there were butches to be sighted. This is Andrea.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

I've known Daddy Rhon since 1996, although we lost touch for years. Rhon is visiting Michelle and Dags from Texas and it was so good to see her again after all these years. I drove from the SF Bay Area to Sacramento, CA to see Rhon and meet up with all Rhon's fabulous butch and femme friends, including the lovely Miss Sabra, pictured below.

Rhon is a proud long-haired butch with a style that makes me feel at home (more of that biker thing, yeah, I like it). Rhon is as warm as they come. So good to see Rhon again!

What can I say? Perhaps it's my hippie youth spent listening to hair bands and hanging out with bikers. I don't know, but I found Daywalker extremely appealing in a butch Ozzy Osbourne kind of way. His wife, Mrs. Daywalker (Lady Flamez), is great too. She's from Tennessee and says that butches go by "he" there. So does her husband, but like Dags below, he is not transgendered.

Shelley is a fabulously interesting butch who is single and "on the market." She's warm, into sports (swimming, hiking and weightlifting), spirituality and works as a parent educator for the parents of disabled kids.

She's 38 and lives outside of Sacramento. Her friends say she's funny. I'd have to agree, she had that vibe about her. I tried to grill her on why she was single (I just never understand how such appealing people aren't hooked up), but we got off topic.

Tigger was taking photos all night, just like me. She called me over to talk and find out exactly why I had taken her photo earlier (with her wife's permission). She used to be a club kid, before she was married with kids. She is not 25, although that's the age I guessed. Tigger is parent to two teenagers and says that she no longer has an identity outside of "Mama." I tried to reassure Tigger that one can get their sense of personal identity back, but also commiserated; parenting changes everything.

Along with loving clubs, photography, her kids and wife, Tigger is an accomplished balloon artist who can do with balloons what a great caterer can do with food. She once made a 8' x 7' Incredible Hunk from baloons, and then stuffed it into her car, head out the sunroof, arms out the windows. A cop drove by and "whooped" his siren, then pulled up to say that she was doing "an awesome job with that."

Dags is a butch who goes by "he." Not transgender but not female identified. Dags teaches math and science and is a great appreciator of his partners phenomenal art and Rag Doll cats. They have six rescues, including one named Gianni and another who looks just like him named Versace. Dags and Michelle live out in the country where they enjoy a quiet life with their cats, art and nature.

Maybe it's being outside the immediate Bay Area, but Sacramento seemed filled with butches. Not only the ones I was with, but others at the bar and walking by. Frannie was in the bar with friends and I felt compelled to approach her to ask the question.

Dallas and her wife have baby twin girls, 7 months old, but adjusted age 4 months. They were premies and the story of their entrance into the world is harrowing and painful. As a woman who has experienced pregnancy and birth trauma myself, I felt especially moved by Dallas's story. Her girls are now 12 lbs each and she and her wife are just starting to talk about what they went through. I appreciated that she shared the story with me and send much love and empathy.

In my usual somewhat tactless fashion, I butted in on a conversation between Christie and an old aquaintance of hers last night at the bar while I was waiting for my drink to ask if she identified as butch.

She seemed a bit taken aback by the question, but not as much as the woman she was talking to who actually got mad. Christie said she loved women, didn't have time for men and didn't seem to own the word "butch." She showed me her bra as if to say, "I'm not butch" but then thought about it and decided she was. All in the span of about two minutes.

Later Christie joined me and my friends at our table to talk about butch. It seemed to me she had a kind of epiphany, and although stumbling on what the definition of butch meant (she chops wood but so do femmes), felt that it was the right term for her.

I stood behind Jamie in line at Peet's Coffee trying to figure out when I was going to ask. Hoping I wasn't misinterpreting the neck tattoo or stance from the back. She ordered, I ordered and then I found her and asked the question. Not only does Jamie identify as butch, her girlfriend has a femme blog called Outspoken Femme.

Jamie is a landscape gardener and former pastry chef. She drinks a dry, triple shot, whole milk cappuccino. She is very friendly and easy going. Hope to run into her at Peet's again sometime.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Today I was talking to the director of my son's summer camp. It was
my first time meeting her and she was so clearly a butch, that I almost
skipped the question "Do you identify as a butch" and asked her if she
would agree to be sighted.

But I didn't skip the
question and she responded thoughtfully by saying she had always been
Tomboygirlish. There was nothing girlish about her. I thought she was
using that term and not butch as some kind of new/old gay slang, but it
turns out, she's never been queer - not in the 70s when she found out wearing plaid had a certain dykely connotation, and not during the many years she's been married to her husband. I know because I asked, "and
you've never been with women?" She hadn't, but she had
also had the question/assumption enough (for years) that she was okay
with the conversation and I didn't feel weird/ashamed for asking. I appreciate her even more for that. She'a also got a kick ass summer camp!

Sunday, July 22, 2012

I surprised Cathy with my question on a sunny afternoon out at the shops. I spotted her when we arrived and waited until she came out of one shop before popping the question.

My guess was that it could go either way: identified as butch or as old school lesbian feminist who lived, at one point in her life, on the land. Truth is, she was intrigued by how she was seen by others, definitely likes the softer energy of more feminine women, and believes that all women carry feminine and masculine within themselves. Cathy still lives on the land part of the time, and the rest in San Francisco, where she grew up. She is a Leo with a birthday coming soon, and we had a lovely and interesting discussion. I introduced her to my son, partner and our butch friend Toby - hoping to make her feel at ease.

Sometime I would love for someone who has been "sighted" to write what it was like from their perspective.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Kitty was walking by on the waterfront under the San Francisco Bay Bridge when I spotted her. She is about to move back to Bethesda, Maryland after 12 years in San Francisco. Kitty grew up in Washington, D.C.; Athens, Greece; and Frankfurt, Germany. She has children and grandchildren and is single (like her, let me know, maybe I can hook you up).

She is a self-made butch who started very successful businesses. And she is very friendly, easy going.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Jen was checking out the produce when I asked her the question. It took her a second to register (as it always does, being apropos of nothing), and then she said yes. I saw her later with her partner and baby. Adorable family.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

This is J. J was looking at her phone when I asked if she ID'd as butch. She looked up, laughed a little, surprised but not unhappy about it, and replied, "Why yes." She immediately told me about her wife, Thea, who gets frustrated at being invisible as a femme. Something many of us femmes can relate to.

J and Thea have been together for 12 years. They moved from the foggy side of San Francisco to Oakland a couple of months ago. J answers questions and asks them too - a very engaged person, easy to talk with, kind, interesting. I met Thea too after she walked in to the store from BART which she took home after work.

J is a scientist. I love that. Let's welcome J and her wife to the neighborhood.

About Me

I am a fat queer non-observant Jewish white femme from the West Coast of the U.S. closer to 50 than 40. I grew up mixed class with college-educated parents and grandparents in what some might say was a colorful and others might call bizarre, world.

I'm married to a butch and we have two children. We are a very queer, very regular, very leftist household.

I'm an artist, writer, corporate worker and fashion-loving, lipstick-wearing "bull in a china shop." I believe in learning for the sake of learning and education for everyone, regardless of test scores and pedigrees. I did not finish high school. I have a Master's degree in art.

I would rather say who I am than not and I would rather ask about who other people are then assume I know (although I do have hunches).

Project Background

What is this?Butch Sightings is a social interaction art project that was inspired by my interest and appreciation for butches & studs (females and/or women who appear masculine, queer, old school, dyke, bulldagger, aggressive [AG] and other terms to be added as I come across them).

Butch is a word that connotes certain traits - a way of dressing, a stance, an attitude, perhaps even an age. It's in-your-face, nonconformist, dangerous and often unassuming. Butch is, in my view, not a role someone decides to play, but a term that describes the essence of a person (or an essence, as I believe we all have many). Butches survive. Butches persevere. Butches walk the line. Butches got it rough. Butches make me feel fine.

How does the project work?Using my iPhone and natural chutzpah, I approach people I think may be butch and ask them if they are, and if I can take their photo and post it.

A simple act of subversive risk and connection - in which my perception as the viewer is pervasive and motivating, and yet is possibly inaccurate. I put myself into the photos by acknowledging my ever-present and biased point-of-view. To pretend to be objective would do a disservice to my work and to the people I meet during the project.

I'm interested in not only the documented image, but also the uncomfortable, sometimes satisfying, sometimes awkward, almost always risky interaction in which I don't pretend not to see, don't act "polite" by not saying anything and don't know what will happen. There's exquisite possibility in the approach across an unknown chasm and I find butches exquisitely beautiful.

I'll use the pronoun "she" to refer to the butches I photograph unless they tell me they prefer something else.